Rapid growth of mobile phones results greatly from the fact that they are equipped not only with the original telephone function but also with other functions such as the WEB browser function and the email function. Mobile phones are still now evolving with additional functions such as the Java application function and the video phone function.
Japan has already launched Digital Satellite Broadcasting services such as CS (Communication Satellite) and BS (Broadcasting Satellite), and scheduled to launch digitalized broadcasting services also for ground-based broadcasting in 2003. Terminals for receiving ground-based digitalized broadcasting have been developed to include even a mobile terminal for local reception, and thus preparations have been carried out for the start of the services.
Future mobile phones are projected to include functions for receiving digitalized broadcasts as well as the WEB browser function and the email function. At present, however, there seems to exist no prior art in the field of problems that the present invention is directed to solving.
Now, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 6-165073 will now be cited as a related art reference.
FIG. 8 shows the block diagram of the reference. According to this invention, when a mute button is pressed by a remote control transmitter 9 or a keyboard 8 attached to the body, muting is activated, and at the same time a caption decoder ON/OFF control unit 10 turns on a caption decoder 3 to display multiplexed caption data via a display processing unit 5.
While muted and the caption decoder is on, on the other hand, when a demute button is pressed by the remote control transmitter 9 or the keyboard 8 attached to the body, demuting is activated and at the same time the caption decoder ON/OFF control unit 10 turns off the caption decoder 3 so that video is displayed alone via the display processing unit 5.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 6-165073 is directed to muting and displaying caption data, but not to implementing other functions.
With a projected future integration of a mobile phone and a digital broadcasting receiver, it may be assumed that a call is received or otherwise requested while a digital broadcast program is received.
Furthermore, the display of a future hybrid terminal of a mobile phone and a digital broadcast receiver can be anticipated small in size. This may pose a problem of conspicuousness with a constant caption display.
The present invention is directed to allowing calling on the phone “while” receiving a digital broadcast, and minimizing the period of caption display of a digital broadcast.